The Estonian Government started testing KSI Blockchain technology in 2008, as a response to the 2007 state-sponsored cyber-attacks.
Estonia became the first Nation State in the world to deploy blockchain technology in its production systems in 2012, for the following reasons:
- The ability to 100% trust government data in any situation is one of the foundational capabilities for any Nation State.
- The ability to enforce integrity of government data provides the capability to effectively mitigate insider threats focused on manipulating with and abusing the stored data.
- The ability to verify the integrity of government data independently of its home database, in real time, enables data interoperability between systems and across boundaries.
Selected State Registries backed by the KSI Blockchain technology in Estonia today:
- Surveillance / Tracking Information System
- Official Laws and Regulations Registry
- Official State Announcements
- Healthcare Registry
- Property Registry
- Population Registry
- Business Registry
- Succession Registry
- Digital Court System
One of the core concepts behind Bitcoin is called linked timestamping and Buldas and Saarepera from Guardtime were the first cryptographers to give a formal security proof in 2003 i.e. what properties do you need for hash-functions and data structures in order to build a formally verifiable security proof. You can read the proof here.
Formal verification might sound arcane but if you want to build a house you had better make sure the foundations are solid – and formal methods and verification are the basis of everything we do at Guardtime.
